Chapter 13: Arrival.
"Oh no . . . " she began. Rem stared, with a pair of eyes that were more studious than surprised. The door started opening and when it did, he spoke, "On the ground. Quick!" After that, he dropped onto his stomach and so did Autumn. "Quiet," he uttered, and she listened. "He's not a raider," Rem said, as he continued staring. A man came out, wearing a Merc Adventurer's outfit. Autumn asked, "What is he?" Rem shook his head, "Just another wastelander, I guess. I honestly didn't expect it to be Raiders, to be honest. They're not typically amrt enough to pull suplly hoaxes like the one that was pulled here." As he spoke, the man sat down on the balcony of the outpost, which was similar to Sandra's outpost save for the fact that it was a lot, lot smaller. After the man sat down, he started drinking whiskey, and then he lit a cigarette.
After that, he started considering how he was going to approach. He was goign to have to circle around to the back and approach from there, where he wouldn't have to worry about a sentry's eyes. Once he got close enough, the large red cargo creates surrounding the outpost should provide enough cover to mount an offense from. Once he concluded that, he started speaking, "Alright, you're going to stay here." He didn't need to look at her full on to see the disdain creeping across her semblance. "What?" she asked, and he elaborated, "When I'm through, I'll smack my rifle against something made out of iron so you can come help me with whatever I find." She stared at him, and he continued, "You don't have a gun and you can't sneak around as well as I can. You'll get me seen before I want to be seen. Don't worry, I'll call for you when it's all over." Autumn looked away from him, disappointed all of a sudden. He was right. She didn't have a gun and she didn't know how to handle herself, and she'd likely just be a burden if she came with him. "Alright, she responded, clearly not entirely at ease. But it didn't have anything to do with Rem, it had to do with her inability to help.
Rem turned to her after she agreed and nodded deeply to her, "Keep your eyes on your surroundings. Don't forget to do that, because you don't want to be snuck up on. If a radscorpion got you, it'd mean a lot of trouble. Understand?" Autumn nodded again, and after she did, Rem started crawling back. Once he had crawled back enough he stood up and reached to his back, where his fingers tugged on the highwayman's noose and released the trail carbine. He took it into his hands and started lightly jogging, avoiding open spaces in front of the outpost as best he could. As for Autumn, when he finally disappeared into a place her eyes couldn't see him anymore, she looked ahead at the outpost again. All of a sudden, she felt so helpless, so useless. So useless and helpless that she found herself envying Rem for being so good at handling himself.
Once Rem had circled around the outpost and he was looking at the rear from where he was standing, he lowered onto his stomach and surveyed. There was absolutely no activity there and there was no way he'd be seen. Good, he thought, and with that, he stood up and started moving in the direction of the outpost. The closer he got, the more comfortable he started feeling. He appreciated the fact that it was going to be so easy to get the jump on these people, but all of a sudden, he caught wind of something. His steps froze and so did his body, Fuck, he mentally exclaimed, with a pair of intense blue eyes aligned downward. He saw the faded yellow frame of an active frag mine, well camouglaged in the sand, and all he could do is thank his perception for having seen it before it was too late. After seeing it, he turned a careful eye around and started spotting more of them, all strategically placed to prevent someone from sneaking up on the outpost.
Rem stood there for a couple of seconds, looking from side to side, assessing the situation, and it didn't take him long to come up with a plan. He had been in these predicaments before and sometimes, it was just amusing how good he was at coming up with counter strategies, especially when frag mines were involved. He started stepping back, carefully, and before long, he was out of the frag mine scope. He went up to one of the red cargo crates and looked around it. He saw a ladder there, leading up to the roof of it, and then he looked around to the other one. This one also had a ladder. Good, he kept mindful of everything. Inside the outpost, he could hear people moving around. He figured that perhaps there would be another two or three of them inside, and grimmer yet, none of them would be survivors.
He was in the middle of surmising that these people, whether they were raiders or not, were the type that needed to be removed when he heard a scream. It came from inside and it reverberated in his ear, leaving him with a heavy weight on his chest. It was a woman, likely a survivor, and he gritted his teeth. Fuck. Autumn, heard it, too. She was in the process of surveying her surroundings from her low position when she heard it. She snapped her eyes back to the outpost and stared. From where she was, it was hard to see anything. "Damn it, what's taking him so long? There's a survivor," she gritted her teeth and tightened her fists as memories of Jesse came back to her. What if the person inside was being tortured. "Damn it Rem, do something, please," she was so sure that nothing would happen that when something did happen, her eyes went wide.
A loud explosion echoed through the distance, and she saw it from where she was watching. It happened behind the outpost, where Rem was going to approach from. Did he . . . no . . . she hoped, realizing that he might have just gotten blown to pieces. After the explosion, two other men emerged from the outpost just as the one outside started standing, holding his weapon in front of him. They all had scoped assault rifles and all three of them looked like they knew what they were doing. Two of them started descending the staircase to level ground while another stayed on the balcony, pointing downward with his assault rifle in case his friends didn't see something. When the two descended, they didn't hear anything, "Must've been an animal." When they saw that the explosion was there but there wasn't a mess, one of them spoke, "Animal, maybe?" "Wait a minute," the other said, his eyes changing. There was a damn boulder there, near the explosion. One that hadn't been there before. "It's a trap!" he yelled, just in time for a shot to reverberate through the distance.
One of the men collapsed to the floor, shot in the head by Rem's rifle. "Shit!" the other yelled, as he started running away. As he started approaching the staircase again Rem pulled the trigger, hastily, but true, and he hit the staircase, causing the man to steer away from it. Beep, beep, beep, "Oh fuck!" Another explosion occured, and the second man's legs were blown off of his body. As Rem saw it, the man's body seemed to float in the air, limp, before it descended towards the ground and landed unceremoniously. Two down, he noted, as he started looking around. He was behind the outpost and where he was, on that red cargo crate, nobody had a chance of firing on him.
As for Autumn, she saw the two men go down. The first one, she just saw a vague image of him dropping to the floor and the second one, she saw his body elevate and fall to the ground, victim to a frag mine. "Hurry up Rem," she whispered.
With two of them dead, he had to wonder how many more were inside. So to find out, he stayed silent for a little while, as silent as he could be, until he heard the other's steps moving him from the balcony and into the outpost. For now, he was certain that there was at least one more, and he had no clue how many more were inside. Rem gritted his teeth, realizing that he had to come to them now, and that they wouldn't come to him unless he waited a long, long time, and it was likely that the survivor inside wouldn't be alive for much longer. Damn it, he thought, as he started rising from his current spot. Once he was standing, he surveyed the ground below and once he was sure there were no mines, he lowered to the edge of the crate and dropped, gently. When he landed, his knees gave way to absorb some of the impact, and he started moving towards the staircase, carefully.
Once he had reached it, he surveyed the staircase itself for frag mines, to see if whoever was up there had left any unpleasant surprises for him. Didn't look like it, so he circled around it. When he was at the base of the staircase, he started questioning whether or not he should take such a straight forward route. This was the one route they were ready for, but then again, there were no other routes. No windows other than the two on the front, and no entrances other than the door between them. Also, there was very little time, considering the situation of the survivor. So with that in mind, he started ascending, making each step careful, and the closer he got the clearer the sounds from within became. The radio was on, playing a bautifully country song. I'm so blue by Katie Thompson, and aside from her, there was nothing but silence. His rifle was held in front of him with the tip of the barrel aligned upwards, towards where the door of the outpost should be. Once he was almost there, he started to sweat. Then he stopped, gritted his teeth, and leaned in. This is ridiculous, he complained, thinking about the fact that these men looked like they knew what they were doing.
"I'm so blue without you . . . Thought our love was true, then you found someone new."
He exhaled, quite loudly, and then he smacked the tip of the rifle against the steps ahead of him frantically. A shot reverberated right after. A shotgun shell blew a hole right through the door, and if he had come over those steps, he would have been shot right in the stomach. Regardless of the fact that the man missed, Rem yelled, "Aaaagh!" What happened afterwards happened in a flash. The door started sliding open, a man came through, believing he'd hit his mark due to the scream, and then another shot was heard. Rem blasted a hole right through his head, and he performed the lever action of the weapon to load another bullet into the chamber before the man had even hit the floor. He didn't even glance at the dead one any longer. He was too busy staring over his dead body, into the outpost itself, looking for activity. He couldn't hear anything other than the music at all. Not even the anxious shuffling of a survivor. It made him nervous.
Each step he took was slow and careful, with the tips of his feet touching ground before the rest followed, so he could stop a step in case he was about to make a huge noise. Every here and there, there was a squeak, and each time there was, he winced, but at the very least, the music muffled some of the noises. He was staring straight ahead when he stepped over the dead body carefully, boots grinding against the dust silently, with his rifle aimed ahead as well, and when he entered the outpost, he saw bulletholes and blood. Looked like everyone was dead, but to his left, there was another room. Likely the barracks, but the door leading to it was partly closed. Rem stared in that direction like he knew something was there and started approaching, slowly. He was so caught up in the silence of everything other than the music so when he heard something loud, his shoulders jumped, "Help me please!" "Shut up, bitch!" After that, he heard a gunshot and when he did, his eyes went wide and he ran towards the door. He kicked it open and kept his body aligned to the right of the door without heading inside.
On the floor, he saw a woman, naked as the day she was born, with a bullet hole in her chest. Didn't look like it'd hit the heart. Her eyes were glancing at him, her mouth tried to talk, and her hands perused the wound like she couldn't believe what had happened. Where are you, he wondered, figuring that the enemy inside was either to the left of the door frame he was staring through or to the right. Then, all of a sudden, he saw something flying through the door. It came from the left side of the room and bounced to his right side, against the door, and started moving towards the ground. The pit pat sound that he heard from it was terrifying because when he heard it, he knew immediately what it was. Somehow, probably just out of instinct, he waved the butt of his weapon at it and before it hit the ground, he smacked it. It flew away and started rolling against the ground as he lowered. When it exploded, he gritted his teeth, expecting the worst.
However, after it happened, he realized that it wasn't a grenade. It was a smoke grenade, and the gray mist didn't fail to quickly start expanding through the room. It blanketed him and as it did, he pointed the rifle towards the door frame, knowing that the person inside would come through there anyway. To make room for a shot, he started backing away, and when he did, he saw another object fly through the door frame. This time, he had the range to act, so he did. He turned his body to his left, ran a step, and dove behind a desk just in time for the grenade to explode. It left his ears ringing but he didn't have time for that. Immediately, he upheld his rifle and sat up. The man in the other room came rushing through the door, knowing the smoke grenade and the actual grenade had either caused enough damage or enough of a ruckus to create an opening for him. When he came out, he knew immediately that his enemy had dived behind one of the desks for cover, and that's where he started heading, looking to climb over it and point down during the chaos.
"Now I'll never know how I love you . . . "
When the man arrived at the desk and began climbing over it to perform his coup de grace, he felt a jarring push coming from the desk. It tripped him to his fore and when he fell, he threw his hands forward to keep himself from landing on his face. In doing so, he threw away his pistol but landed right on top of Rem, who had his rifle held horizontally, with his fingers out of the lever hoop to keep himself from being entangled during what was going to happen next. When the man landed, he crashed on top of Rem and grabbed out at the rifle. "You're going to fucking die," the man uttered, growling as he did, as he began pushing down on the rifle. Rem's hat came off as the back of his head pressed up against the wooden floor, and he felt the larger man's weight start to be a factor, because the more time went by, the closer the trail carbine got to his neck. "Diiieeee," the man said, gritting his teeth, pressing with all the strength he could muster in an attempt to choke Rem.
"Watching the stars above us . . . Hoping that I could win back your loooooove." The radio continued.
Rem released a breath of exertion and started tightening his eyes, "Ugh," then he pressed his lips together and pushed back. The man raised his body just a bit and when Rem noticed that, he knew he was about to push down with his weight, so when the man did that, Rem pushed the rifle up over his head, causing the man to push it down against the floor. At the same time, Rem let go of the carbine and elevated, throwing his head forward as he did, and he caught the man right on the bridge of the nose with a headbutt. The man yelled in pain and raised his body while Rem gritted his teeth in pain, but he didn't let it stop him from throwing a throat punch, which connected flush while the man was in disarray. He coughed after that, and Rem took advantage of that to lift up explosively to turn him over. Rem ended up on top of him, placed between his legs, and he started punching and elbowing wildly. The back of the man's head smacked against the wood multiple times before he reached up and grabbed Rem's neck and squeezed. Rem gritted his teeth, feeling the nails digging into the skin, and feeling the strain of getting the air choked out of him.
"I'm so blue . . . without you. Thought our love was true."
Mother . . . he began, as he grabbed the man's wrist with one hand and wrapped his other arm around his elbow. Fucker, and as he finished the thought, he bent the man's arm at the elbow to get the hand off his neck and then jerked the arm to the side, angling the forearm counter clockwise away from the elbow. "Aaaaaaaaaaagh!" the man yelled, in light of having his elbow broken. As he yelled in pain Rem got off of him and rolled to his left, in the direction of the man's pistol. He grabbed it and turned around as swifly as he could just in time to see the man looking to grab Rem's rifle. Rem pulled the trigger multiple times, hitting him in the back with as many as five bullets before he stopped moving. Rem was breathing hard, but once it was over, he turned onto his back and placed a hand over his chest. It started to hurt.
At the same time, the song started pacing to an end, abruptly ending and giving way to another song. Jazz Blues, which was another mellow tune.
"Agh . . . god damn it," he said, gritting his teeth shortly before standing. He dropped the pistol and walked over to the man he had just killed. He was wearing a Merc Veteran's outfit. Probably the leader of the four. He reached down and picked up his rifle, nearly stumbling, and then he headed towards the barracks. There, he saw the naked woman on the floor. She was still glancing at him, breathing, but there was blood trailing out of her mouth. From the looks of her, she'd been raped and abused. He started approaching her, "You'll be alright." He said, as he knelt down in front of her, just in time for him to hear something coming. "Shit!" he whispered, grabbing the trail carbine and pointing back at whoever was there. "Don't shoot!" he heard. It was Autumn, holding her hands up, "God damn it I told you not to come until I gave you the signal." He turned back around and tossed the trail carbine away, and started assessing the female.
Autumn walked up quickly and looked down at her. "Oh no . . . quick, we have to stop the bleeding!" Rem spoke, "Put pressure on the wound." "What?" "Put pressure on the damn wound!" He reached back to her, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her close. After that, he placed her hand against the blood, "Pressure," he commanded, and so she did. Rem took off the duffle bag and started looking through it. He set a stim pack down, tweezers, whiskey, and a dose of med x on the floor while Autumn stared at the woman's face. "You're going to be alright," she uttered, just as the light started fading from her eyes. "No, don't die," she said. As it started to become more and more apparent that she was leaving, however, she got more frantic and yelled "Don't die!" Moments later, the woman's eyes went blank, staring straight at her but at nothing at the same time. Rem stopped in his tracks with a stim pack dose in hand, ready to inject her. He inhaled and exhaled, and Autumn's hands started shaking.
In the background, the song continued, with a melancholy trumpet that blended in . . . painfully well.
After a couple of seconds, Rem lowered his hands with the stim pack in hand, "She's gone."